A homeless person in New York City: Roughly 1 in 6 Americans now live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

September 13, 2011

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The economic news isn't getting any better. Data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that America's poverty rate is at its highest point since 1993. Indeed, the poverty rate "is now approaching levels not seen since Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965," says Don Lee in the Los Angeles Times. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers:

42Percentage increase in income for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans during that same period. "It's not that the American economy has necessarily performed badly," says Paul Osterman, an MIT labor economist. "As a country we're richer over that period, but there's been this real shift in where the income has gone, and it's to the top."